How Insurance Companies are Using Drones to Minimize Risk

Like any other industry, drones are playing an essential role in the insurance sector. Insurance providers have faced a major challenge in collecting data associated with property damage for many years now. They feel that when a disaster strikes, they often have to send their valuation staff to a dangerous territory, which makes the disaster valuation riskier.

Besides that, insurance companies feel that they cannot always rely a 100% on images brought by their valuators prior to insuring a property. For these reasons, adoption of insurance drones is a breath of fresh air for policy makers in this industry.

How Drones are being Used by Insurance Providers

Aerial Inspection of Boilers and Chillers

The United States law relating to commercial equipment insurance requires providers to conduct regular surveys of pressure vessels and boilers. This helps ensure that the best practices are being followed by companies in order to maintain the safety of their employees.

However, boilers are usually multi-story high and hard to inspect. Using drones, inspection staff at the insurance company can easily measure the health of any commercial equipment, making this process quick, convenient and safer than ever before.

Pre-Insurance Inspections and Risk Asssesment

Some properties are hard to evaluate just because they cover a large piece of land with multiple objects in between. Consider a farmer who needs insurance for their crop for an upcoming season. An insurance valuator may not be able to scour through the crop to determine how much that piece of land is worth. When insurance companies use drones to value such properties, they can save both time and money and get an ‘accurate picture’ of the irrigated land.

Drone Inspection of Disaster Hit Areas

Did you know that federal and state authorities usually do not allow civilians to enter an area, which has been recently hit by a flood or any other natural disaster? One of the major reasons is that such properties might be infested with bacteria or other debris that can be hazardous for health.

Drones become quite useful in this kind of scenario as it can be equipped with a high resolution camera to take detailed pictures of the affected property. While sitting in their offices, insurance inspectors can then determine how much damage has been caused to an insured property.

Preventing work place injuries

Unfortunately work place injuries are all too common and are very costly to the company, the insurance provider, and the injured employee, depending on the situation. Drones are helping to ease the problem by helping to stop and accident before it happens. Inspecting job sites from the air can help spot problems from another perspective. Routine aerial inspection is one of the may ways to help to eliminate risk.

Monitoring and Preventing Insurance Fraud

When a natural disaster like hurricane hits an area, it destroys everything in its path. Often times, affected customers claim for property damage that was already there. To mitigate this type of risk, insurance firms can compare detailed pictures taken by their drones before and after the calamity. This can save insurance providers a considerable amount of money in the long run and increase their profits.

As drones evolve with time, so will the procedures in many different industries, including the insurance sector. Drones with a combination of technologies including HD cameras and voice recorders have started to define the future of the insurance industry. Companies that are first movers in adopting these robots can gain a competitive advantage over their peers.